Despite my stomach sinking like a weight in the ocean, I try my best to reassure her. How could she think I’d ever hate her. I’m not capable of it.
“I’m not going to hate you, just talk to me. We can’t move forward if we don’t talk about the past.”
She takes a deep, shaky exhale. To soothe her, I cradle one side of her jaw and run soft brushes down her cheek.
“I—I—It’s not easy to explain.”
“So try anyway.”
She goes quiet for a long beat, her eyes flicking around the room before finally landing back on me.
“I just felt…lost.” Her voice trembles. “We were always such anus. But the second I got to school, I couldn’t figure out how to bemewithout you.”
I knew she struggled with the adjustment—I did too. But I stay quiet.
“The more time that passed, the more I realized I didn’t like the version of myself I was becoming. I lived for the weekends, because that’s when I got to see you. I didn’t make any real friends because that would’ve meant cutting into the little time we had together. My grades were slipping. Yours were too. Everything felt like it was moving around me—fast—and I was stuck. Everyone else seemed to know what they wanted, what came next. And all I had was…you.”
She swallows, her fingers curling in her lap.
“You were my only plan. I didn’t know what job I wanted, or what I even liked anymore. Everything I did was for us, around us, because of us. That’s when I started thinking maybe I needed a little space. Just a break. It was never supposed to be permanent.”
She glances at me, eyes so full of pain, it physically hurts to look into them.
“But I knew if I told you it was temporary, you wouldn’t really let go. You’d wait. You’d call. You’d show up. And I needed the kind of space that meant figuring things out on my own.”
She blows out a long, heavy breath.
“You make one choice, thinking it’s just a pause, a breather—and you don’t realize it’s the thing that changes everything. I thought maybe I needed a few weeks. A month. Just until study abroad started. I didn’t mean for it to be forever.”
Her voice breaks just a little, and when she meets my gaze again, it’s devastating.
“When you’re young, everything feels like the end of the world. Every choice feels bigger than it is, and every mistake feels permanent. I didn’t mean to lose you. I was just trying to find myself.”
I swallow hard, the burn creeping up my throat like acid. There’s more. There has to be. Ellie’s always been quick to make rash decisions, sure—butthatbeing the reason weended? Just her needing space? I’m not buying it. Not completely.
She drops her elbows to her thighs, burying her face in her hands. When she speaks again, her voice is muffled and tired.
“About a week in, I knew I’d fucked up.”
She lets out a dry, humorless laugh, lifting her head just enough to look at me.
“I realized what I really needed was to talk to you—reallytalk to you. So I made this whole plan to come visit you that weekend and basically beg you to take me back.”
She pauses, eyes glassy now.
“But I wasn’t feeling well. I figured it was just stress at first. My period had started, and it was bad. Heavy. Cramping that wouldn’t let up. Or at least—that’s what I thought it was…”
She trails off and my heart lurches.
“I could barely move,” she continues. The pain was indescribable. I was pale, I was shaking. Scottie threatened to call my mom if I didn’t go to the hospital. So we went to the hospital.”
My lungs deplete all their air. I’m choking on nothing, suffocating in the void.
I was holed up in my dorm room trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong, meanwhile she was hundreds of miles away and she wasn’t okay. And I wasn’t there.
“What was happening?” My voice is barely audible.
A shuttering exhale passes through her lips, her green eyes meeting mine, and my heart compresses.
